The blog of the University of Edinburgh's PIR subject area

Security in an independent Scotland

An objective analysis of the prospective security situation of an independent Scotland is impossible. There is no objective or settled meaning to the term ‘security’, even in the current governmental and constitutional arrangements of the UK. It is thus not possible to simply produce an objective and comparative list of ‘threats’ to the UK and an independent Scotland. The real question is how governments perceive threats and what they attempt to do about them. The question is therefore not whether an independent Scotland would face different threats to the rest of the UK, but how the government of an independent Scotland would perceive threats and what it would attempt to do about them.

At present, the UK government does not have a coherent approach to ‘security’, and there is no reason to think that an independent Scottish government would be any different. Governments of modern states are sprawling, complex beasts…